Indian Food is Yummy but Now Science Says So Too

Chicken dum biryani and raita or paneer tikka masala with dal tadka and jeera rice or gujarati kadhi or tomato sev curry or gatte ki sabzi or maacher jhol or doi maach or chicken momos or aviyal or chicken gassi or poriyal or chettinad chicken; shall I go on or do you get the drift? Indian food, folks, is mouth watering, delectable, finger licking maybe even to die for!

Most people not used to the Indian spices will cry if they have a Kolhapuri curry the first time. They say things like ‘Why does Indian food have to be so spicy?’ we can have a debate on this but really bottom line here is Indian food is delicious and everybody knows it. I mean, really, nothing beats Indian food, does it? We always knew that but now science is backing us up.  

Scientists have performed a very detailed research and analysed 2500 Indian recipes to find out why Indian food is so good. You read that right my friend, two thousand five hundred recipes of Indian food. And now we tell you what they found out.

If you’ve ever cooked, Maggi does not count; you’ll know that our spice blends will have a variety of flavours like clove, cardamom, cinnamon, garlic and ginger. To these we add curry makers like onions, coconut, coriander and the likes of it. So the difference comes here, when we blend coconut and coriander, i.e. we blend the sweet coconut flavour with the fresh green zing of coriander. Simply saying, we add opposite flavourings, i.e. flavours that are opposite in nature.

Normally, western foods will have sweet flavours with other complementary flavours. For example, they’ll use cinnamon with sugar, you know, sugar and sweet spice! Ever tasted an apple crumble? That’s what I mean by complimentary flavours. If you’ve ever had biryani or made some, you’d find the little tell tale sticks of cinnamon in a savoury dish like biryani. See the point? Different and really opposite flavours, something western food doesn’t do often.

They call these pairings of spices – negative pairings or opposite flavour pairings. Basically it just boils down to opposites attract. And so we now know why we can’t help go *poppysmic when it comes to Indian food, it’s all in the science after all!

*poppysmic is the sound produced when you smack your lips